Woman gets life for US family killings

An Ecuadorian-born woman who was convicted of orchestrating the beating deaths of her millionaire husband and mother-in-law in the US has been sentenced to life in prison.

Narcy Novack waived her right to appear at the sentencing in New York, apparently in protest, and listened to it from a prisoner holding area in an adjoining room.

Judge Kenneth Karas called it "her final act of cowardice".

Novack and her brother, Cristobal Veliz, were convicted of hiring hit men who carried out the 2009 beating deaths of Ben Novack Jr in New York and Bernice Novack in Florida.

Veliz also was sentenced on Monday to a life term.

Ben Novack, 53, was the son of the man who built the Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach, a celebrity hangout in the 1950s and '60s that appeared in the movies, Scarface and Goldfinger.

He was beaten to death with dumbbells in July 2009 in his bed at a hotel in New York state.

A thug who admitted carrying out the killing testified that Narcy Novack ordered her husband's eyes sliced with a knife and offered a pillow to muffle his screams.

Three months earlier, Novack's 86-year-old mother, Bernice, was killed with a plumber's wrench.

Prosecutors said Narcy Novack feared her husband would divorce her and that a prenuptial agreement would bar her from the multimillion-dollar family estate. They said her motives were "hatred, greed and vengeance".

Rebecca Bliss, a former prostitute and porn actress, testified at the trial that she was having an affair with Ben Novack when he was killed.

She said Narcy Novack had offered her $US10,000 ($A9500) to end the affair.

According to Bliss, Novack said: "If she couldn't have him, no other woman was going to have him."

Novack did not testify.

In addition to the attacks on Ben and Bernice Novack, the defendants were convicted of domestic violence and stalking. Novack was convicted of money laundering and transporting stolen property, and Veliz was convicted of witness tampering.

The attackers, who co-operated with the prosecution, have yet to be sentenced.

Novack's lawyer, Howard Tanner, would not say how Novack reacted to the verdict or why she left the courtroom.

He said he will soon file an appeal of her conviction.

"She is still asserting her innocence," he said.

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